>Untested enforceability is not better than tested and confirmed un-enforceability.
This is addressed by Linus directly and it's simply not true. That the license can be enforced without testing in court is evidenced by the fact that they are being able to enforce it without lawsuits. If you get a legal precedent that somehow says the opposite you are now deeply screwed. Courts are fickle beasts. You now get to spend a bunch of time/money trying to reverse that, or even worse, launch the worlds largest open-source relicensing effort. For the kernel that's basically impossible. You'd basically destroy copyleft completely.
You're right, I hadn't considered the potential ramifications for the Linux kernel specifically, and how variably educated court judges can actually be.
This is addressed by Linus directly and it's simply not true. That the license can be enforced without testing in court is evidenced by the fact that they are being able to enforce it without lawsuits. If you get a legal precedent that somehow says the opposite you are now deeply screwed. Courts are fickle beasts. You now get to spend a bunch of time/money trying to reverse that, or even worse, launch the worlds largest open-source relicensing effort. For the kernel that's basically impossible. You'd basically destroy copyleft completely.